See the Beautiful Photos of These Transgender People Made Over as Their Idols

The results are powerful.

If there’s one thing that’s abundantly clear, there is a major dearth of representation in the media for the transgender community. That's why BuzzFeed, Bumble and bumble, and Metro Look came out with a cool photo series in which they turned 16 transgender people into their celebrity idols for a day, the purpose being to provide them with representations of themselves in pop culture.

One of the people who participated in the photo series was Tyler Ford, whose idol is Scary Spice from the Spice Girls. Tyler told BuzzFeed: “When I was little, we would play Spice Girls in school, and I always wanted to be Ginger — but my friends would always tell me I had to be Scary because I was black. It was upsetting for me as a 6-year-old, but as I got older I started to think, Why would I want to be anyone other than Scary? Scary is clearly the best Spice Girl! So my emotional relationship with Scary Spice is weird, because initially I was forced into a particular role due to my race and appearance, but ultimately I ended up celebrating that I resembled her. Scary Spice is badass, gorgeous, and has a great personality!”

Tyler had several reasons for deciding to embody Scary Spice. “I very purposely purposefully chose a fun person to be, and chose to myself by joyful. … We deserve to celebrate our lives and ourselves.”

Shane Henise, a transgender advocate, got turned into Zayn Malik for the shoot. Shane told BuzzFeed: “As a trans man, it’s been kind of hard for me to find men who I can even aspire to be, because I feel like our definitions of masculinity and what is attractive are being really tall and buff, and in a trans body, that’s hard to attain. So I’m always looking for different representations of masculinity in celebrities. I feel like Zayn definitely brings masculinity, but it’s stylish and alternative — it’s the kind of masculine that I want to be. So I look up to him as a fashion icon.”

Shane also explained that being able to step into his fashion icon’s shoes, was “really validating” and he felt “so confident.” As for what Shane hopes this shoot shows the world, he says, “I hope that this post shows the humanity of trans people — that we’re just people like everybody else, and we have celebrity icons, and style, and we can be attractive too. I hope it humanizes us.”

You can see the rest of this powerful story and photoshoot on BuzzFeed.

The original piece on BuzzFeed was written by: Nora Whelan, Jon Premosch, Meredith Talusan, and Shannon Keating.